Mobility: a medium for computation, communication, and control

The advent of ubiquitous mobile computing has widely been regarded as the convergence of pager-like communications technology and laptop-like computational power enabling applications that span both realms of functionality. However ubiquitous mobile computing, coupled with the proliferation of microprocessor-controlled appliances and networking, creates another important new application arena: that in which mobile computers act as controllers for and interfaces to, appliances and services in the surrounding environment. This position paper explores the convergence of computation with communications and control applications, and the models of mobile computing that consequently arise. Established applications and models are positioned relative to this framework, and hitherto unexplored control-based models of mobile computation are described.